Many people say that email marketing is a dead medium. Try telling that to my clients for whom I design more emails than you probably get in your inbox. Not only is it still alive, it’s thriving. Recently my favorite email marketing provider, Mailchimp, had their one millionth user.

Whether you believe email marketing is dead or alive I think there are some things we as designers, marketers and entrepreneurs can learn from email. Below are just five of the things I love about email marketing that can translate to other areas of marketing.

Keep it Short and Sweet

In email marketing you only have a brief moment to get someone’s attention and convince them to take action. You are one of many emails in their inbox and they already have their finger on the delete button. You can’t spend your time on long introductions. You’ve got to get them now.

We tend to just add another web page or go from 8.5×11 to 11×17 for our printing and it is killing our marketing efforts. People think that the “elevator pitch” is just something you keep in your bag for when you’re forced to talk quickly. I use an elevator pitch EVERY TIME. If you’re not interested in those 30 seconds then I won’t waste your time or mine by going further. Keeping everything in your life short and sweet will go a long way.

Single Purpose

The most effective email campaigns have only one job to do. This is very similar to direct mail. You need to identify your primary goal in each piece and direct all of your design efforts toward reaching that goal. Now days we want people to call us, email us, stop by our website, download our white paper…oh…and also give us their money. If you can’t focus neither will your prospect and that means you’re wasting your efforts (and money).

I once put together a direct mail campaign and money was tight so we needed to get the most out of the piece as possible. Do you think we wanted them to do 50 things? Nope, I needed a clear cut objective so that I could figure out if we were going to get the right response. A clear cut goal allows you to keep the reader/prospect focused and also allows you to test your effectiveness which leads me to the next point.

Culture of Testing

Email marketing isn’t just a call to action and a pretty picture. Effective email marketers are scientists. There’s the old sales mantra, “Always be closing” but I would say email marketers would say it should be “always be testing.” We want to know if changing the call to action to orange instead of blue will create a better response or if changing one word in the subject line matters. It’s like going to the eye doctor “better, or worse.”

This is probably one of the most important things you can do for your business and in your life. “If I do this will things be better or worse?”

I’ve always said that if you’re an entrepreneur, no matter what industry you’re in, you are in the marketing business. To be successful in the marketing business you must always be testing. Test different fliers, web pages, colors and copy. Always be testing.

Limitation Sensitive

This is actually what I hate about email marketing. With all of the advances in technology over the last ten years email seems to be the slowest to evolve because everyone uses a different email provider and reads their emails in different browsers. As an email designer you have to design for the person with the crappiest email browser….I’m talking to you Microsoft Outlook.

This sucks for designers because we are limited in what we can do but it does teach us an important lesson. You have to make sure you can reach the lowest and slowest in your demographic. Don’t spend money on a killer Facebook page if the majority of your demographic still looks for you in the yellow pages. Learn who your customers are and how to find them. It doesn’t matter if I’m running sexy ads in GQ. If your customers aren’t there then quit trying to be like me. Go find where your fish are and park your boat there.

Above the Fold Still Matters

Blogging teamed up with varying screen sizes and killed the whole idea of “above the fold.” In email, it still matters. Remember, we’re keeping things short and sweet so we need to take that single goal, make it into a call to action and place that thing as close to the top as possible.

In a world where we’re too wordy and think communication volume maters more than communication quality we need to trim our words down and put the most important ones at the top.

Bonus: You’re Punished for Irrelevance

In direct mail, if you send something that’s irrelevant to someone they just toss it in the trash. In email marketing they click the “junk mail” button. While the reader may think they are just pushing a glorified delete button they are actually notifying their ISP who then notifies the sender’s provider (read as tattling) and it can then shut down the marketer’s ability to continue doing their job.

To combat this marketers must always ensure that their readers actually want to hear from them and are finding value in what they are saying. In a world where “if you don’t like it you can turn the channel” nobody cares if what they are saying really matters. This wastes your time and can also bruise the perception of your brand. Even more, you often pay more for how large your list is. That means that you’re paying to keep people on your list who may not click “junk” but they aren’t reading it either.

We should tailor everything to our audience and care about being relevant to them. Sure the ones who don’t want what you’ve got can move along but it doesn’t take much for a reader of 13 months to start clicking “junk” the moment you stop being relevant to them.

There are plenty more lessons we can learn from email marketing but I clearly have a hard time listening to my own advice to keep things short and sweet. We’ll just have to wait for next time.

I hope you’ve found a few ways you can improve your marketing through these lessons.

Over the course of this series we’ve found a way to narrow down that massive to-do list into some actionable items that just might help you to get things done for a change. We’ve identified the key characteristics of both short and long-term marketing tasks and we should now have an understanding of the 2-1 marketing strategy and why it can be effective.

Below is a list of common marketing tasks that may be on your list. Please note that this is not, in any way, a comprehensive list. However these examples combined with your understanding of the short and long-term should lead you down the right path. If I’ve missed some very important tasks in my examples please feel free to leave them in the comments. I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Common Examples of Short-Term Marketing Tasks

• Cold Calling
• Trade Show Events
• PPC Advertising
• Traditional Print Advertising
• Direct Mail
• Mobile Advertising
• Direct Response Advertising
• Flyer Distribution

Common Examples of Long-Term Marketing Tasks

• Traditional Public Relations
• Blogging
• Guest Blogging
• Social Networking
• Email Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization
• Article Marketing
• In-Person Networking
• Event/Charity Sponsorship
• Webinar Series

Like I said, this list is hardly complete. In addition, I feel that there are a few things we need to keep in mind. First, please know that one’s idea of “short-term” changes with each business model. This is primarily due to how long your sales cycle is. A real estate agent’s idea of short-term is not the same as someone in retail.

Second, some tasks can be considered for both short and long-term goals. Something like attending a trade show event could generate quick sales (short-term), especially if your product is sold on site but it could also be strategic in overall brand awareness and market control (long term). In one of my businesses I consider short-term sales to be less than 30 days. A trade show can give me that, no problem. But, if I want to saturate that area with my brand then it plays a much bigger role because it aligns me with that community. In that case my idea of ROI shifts. I just want to generate enough short-term sales to fund my larger ambition  (i.e. keep paying to attend the trade show).

Email marketing is a another one that can play both sides. If you have a mailing list that is active and is filled with subscriber purchase anything you send their way then email marketing will be more of a short-term goal. But keep in mind that you must spend months cultivating the relationship with your subscribers in order to achieve that so this will then become a long-term task. Again, which column you place some of these tasks in depends on your focus.

Another thing you should understand is that you are not married to whatever three tasks you choose. Some will work, some won’t, so what. You’re always going to be making changes. The whole point of this exercise is just to get you moving. Remember, your marketing sucks because you aren’t marketing. It’s time to start doing a couple things here and there that will make a huge impact on your future. If you aren’t moving, you aren’t growing and three small tasks are just what you need to get moving again.

In conclusion, please understand that this is not theory. Some marketing tasks yield bigger results than others but it really doesn’t matter what you choose. A wonderful byproduct of the 2-1 marketing strategy is the “oomph” you feel as a business owner. Someone once said that picking up women is not about looks it’s about confidence. Well I’m telling you that in this situation it isn’t about the marketing task, it’s about the energy – the “oomph.” Believe me when I tell you that you will find opportunities in places you never thought and you will be inspired in many ways simply by committing to just “get this stuff done.”

I put this in to practice and within weeks I had a new found energy in my business. Long-term (and some short-term) had yet to pay off but I was playing the game and I was becoming an active participant in my company’s growth again. To me, that is more valuable than sales. If my heart has checked out the bottom line will do nothing to keep this business moving.

As a business owner you are the heart of your organization. If the heart isn’t pumping then your company is as good as dead. Follow the exercise in this series and you’ll get the blood flowing again. Good luck!

In this series we’ve been discussing why marketing sucks for small business owners and we’ve been working on a way to get you out of that rut. We’ve gone over the idea of combining three small, manageable tasks that can be completed on a daily or weekly basis in a 2-1 ratio of long-term to short-term tasks.

Today I’d like to discuss the common traits of both task categories in order to help you classify your tasks and narrow things down into an actionable list.

Marketing will always either cost you time or cost you money and these categories reflect that. Our goal here is to maximize our efforts so we get the most while spending the least of both of these resources. It’s called efficiency.

Common Traits of Short-Term Tasks

First, short-term tasks usually cost money. Trade shows, paid advertising or a sales team all cost cash up front.

Second, and most important to me, short-term tasks should be easily measured. I tend to follow what Rick Perreault, CEO of Unbounce, once said regarding marketing ROI. He said that for every dollar he spent on marketing he wanted to make three. Now, depending on our business model, we can do better than that. However, this ratio works.

Bottom line here, you need to be able to achieve your goal right away and have a solid metric to justify the expense. If you hire a sales person for $3,000 a month, he better make you more than you’re spending or else you need to get rid of him. In the same sense, if you’re advertising online and you aren’t making your money back then pick something else.

Whatever you do for your short-term task you better be able to measure your results. That means leads, that means calls coming in, that means sales. And it better happen quick.

Finally, short-term tasks usually don’t take a ton of time to execute at first. Yes, managing an AdWords account can get tedious. But you can run a banner ad campaign or throw some ads on Facebook in a couple minutes. It’s all about quantity with a short-term task so you want to be able to knock as much out in as little time as possible. Remember, if a task is too big, break it down into smaller pieces so it won’t take as long.

For example, if I was new to Search Marketing and wanted to start advertising on Google AdWords, I could break this task down into smaller tasks and do them over the course of a week.

It could look like this:

• Monday: Research how to start using AdWords
• Tuesday: Still research how to start using AdWords (it’s freaking complicated)
• Wednesday: Research keywords to use (just a couple at first)
• Thursday: Designate/Build a landing page (could take a couple nights)
• Friday: Setup AdWords Account and create a couple ads

Note that I split everything down into a smaller task so that it would still be only one part of the 2-1 ratio. Once that was out of the way, I can now create recurring tasks for my 2-1 ratio.

So it could look like this:

• Monday: Review ad performance and analytics, decide what I could change on the ads and the landing pages
• Tuesday: Change ads and landing pages (you should only be changing small variations anyway so this won’t take long)
• Wednesday: Look for new keywords to use
• Thursdays: Designate/Build a landing page (can be based on the previous ones)
• Friday: Launch new ads
• Monday: Rinse and Repeat

Now this is a pretty general idea but you should get the point. This is actually very similar to what I’ve done for my own businesses in the past. If I’ve been VERY motivated or had time on a weekend I’ve accomplished the big “ramp up” task in order to get to the reoccurring/repeatable tasks quicker though that isn’t necessary.

Common Traits of Long-Term Tasks

First, long-term tasks usually don’t cost much if any money at all. However, they are time consuming. That is why I hate them. This blog series has probably taken years off of my life and it will be even longer before I can tell if I increased my bottom-line because of it which leads me to my next point.

These tasks are not instantly measurable. You will eventually be able to track monetary success through a metric but you need to take time implementing the long-term task in order to gather the data. Again, I can’t tell you right now if this blog post will lead to another customer for me. But, over time, I will have data to support that.

Thirdly, long-term tasks aren’t always chasing after a financial goal. You may want brand recognition. Yes, that should boil down to revenue but Budweiser doesn’t fill our T.V.’s up with commercials on game day in order to sell a couple more bottles of beer. They do it so that we recognize their brand when we walk into a store and see the display. That’s when we buy. In fact, that’s a great example of combining long-term (commercials) with short-term (in-store displays and placement). You’re welcome. With this blog there is a long-term goal at play here and that is branding my overall expertise on marketing. That will eventually make closing a sale far easier when a prospect can see that I know what I’m talking about or is aware of my reputation. But it will be awhile before we can see if a customer will call simply because of this blog. That’s why long-term goals aren’t immediately all about the money

If you’re in your business for the long haul then a 2-1 ratio of long to short-term tasks does the trick. Think of it this way: “Short-term pays the bills in order to allow us to keep doing long-term.”

In the next post we’ll lay out some good examples of both short and long-term task and even find some that can fulfill both categories.

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.This is the first episode in an ongoing video series we’re trying out.

In each episode of “The Q&A” I’ll address a common question related to business, marketing and design.

Let me know what you think in the comment section and, if you have a question you’d like me to answer, be sure to hit me up on Twitter.

Thanks for watching!

In the previous post of this series we discussed narrowing our marketing plan down to a few small and manageable tasks that we can complete daily. I know, it’s not as sexy as a huge marketing plan. But get this through your head; a huge marketing plan that sits on your shelf is not a plan. It’s a book. You need to execute something in order to get your business moving. A couple small things that are actually completed will move you much farther than that thick document you just spill coffee on. Get it?

[NOTE: For a little more background on my belief regarding consistently doing small tasks that pay off over time, check out my post "Zero to $1Million in Five Minutes."]

There are so many different tasks out there, how do you pick what to do? There is no hard an fast rule. Generally I take into account the amount of time it takes to complete, the cost and how often it needs to be completed. I also sometimes consider what can be done on the couch in front of the T.V. at night. This sounds dumb but, during the week, that’s the only time I have with my wife and it’s the only time I’m not working with clients. That being said, if I have market after hours, it needs to fit into my marriage. Some things I do in front of the T.V. include submitting PPC ads for approval, keyword research for SEO, landing page design, video editing, etc.

Generally speaking, marketing projects and tasks can be placed in one of two categories: long-term and short-term. Most people consider all of marketing (and branding) to be long-term and leave the sales department in the short-term category. Looking closer you’ll see that marketing can achieve both long-term and short-term goals. My companies do not have sales teams and we are still able to achieve both goals.

The best marketing plan should feature tasks from both categories. This is where my 2-1 Marketing strategy comes in to play.

Introducing My 2 to 1 Marketing Strategy

The 2 to 1 Strategy involves combining 2 long-term tasks with 1 short-term task and doing all three on a daily or weekly basis. Now, which is “two” and which is “one” depends on your goals and your cash flow. As you’ll see in the next post of this series, marketing will always cost you either time or money so cash flow matters when deciding which is “one” and which is “two.”

Your goals also matter. If you want to lay down some roots in your industry and are less worried about the quick buck then you will want to focus more on long-term.

Why do we only pick three things to do? Simple, we don’t have time to do more than three things. If, after a few months, you feel like you can add more then go for it. It is possible. But we need to get you rocking here so start small. Don’t forget, you don’t market your business because there is too much to do. Start small and you might actually do it.

Generally I like to combine two long-term tasks with one short-term task. Mainly because I want my business to be here for a long time and I know the long-term efforts will pay off. I also know that I have a little more time than money and things like PPC and traditional advertising cost money. I can’t afford to be doing too many of those at once.

Action Plan: Narrowing Down that Bucket List

Take out your list from the previous post. You know, your Marketing Bucket List o’ Fun. Look over it carefully. With a hi lighter or colored pen mark the tasks that don’t take much time (less than an hour). These are going to be your first tasks. If your tasks are too broad, for example “blogging” then considering narrowing it to “write a blog post”

In the next post, we’ll outline some common traits of both short-term and long-term marketing tasks in order to help you refine your marketing task list.

Let’s come out with it right at the beginning here – the biggest excuse people have for not marketing effectively is not that they don’t have the money. It’s not that they don’t know what they’re doing. For small business owners, it can be boiled down to this.

“there’s too much to do and not enough time to do it so we just don’t do it at all.”

Think about it. When you boil down all of the excuses, the reason why it hurts so much to market our businesses is because that list of things that “we should be doing” is overwhelming.

Stop by a blog, follow a marketer on Twitter or pick up a business magazine and you’re going to get hit with a long list of things you need to be doing to market your business successfully. Soon after that, you’re going to be hit with the depression or hopelessness that comes from not being able to see that new idea become a completed task.

I had the same problem. Heck I still have that problem. I hated my own business because it wasn’t growing. Yes, it was generating decent revenue but I almost shut it down because we plateaued and the thing I hate most in this world is a lack of progress. Even more I resented the fact that my marketing wasn’t paying off. This resentment, hopelessness and hostility lasted for almost a year. Why wasn’t my marketing working? Am I bad at marketing? That was an especially scary question considering the fact that I teach businesses how to market.

After months of thought, and some prayer, I realized that my marketing wasn’t paying off because I really wasn’t marketing. I would do a couple things here or there but it was like keeping a bunch of plates spinning. I’d spin one for awhile and then move on to another one and the other would fall to the ground. Translation: I was being inconsistent. Anybody who has sat in a room with me and discussed marketing knows how “militantly hardcore” I am about consistency with it comes to marketing. Yet, here I was not being consistent.

We’ve heard the number one excuse why people don’t market effectively but it is far simpler than that. The number one reason why your marketing plan sucks is because you aren’t doing it. And, if you are, you sure as Hell aren’t doing it consistently and consistency is the only thing that makes marketing successful. Believe me when I say that even crappy marketing, if done with consistency, will generate revenue.

The main reason you aren’t doing it consistently is NOT because you aren’t good at marketing. I mean, you probably aren’t, but that’s not why. The reason you aren’t doing it consistently is because you are trying to do too much. Go on the Internet and you’ll find an overwhelming barrage of marketing ideas. As a small business owner, when I see a marketing “idea”, I see another task that is now on my list. Your list is too big and that’s why you suck at this marketing thing. Quit doing everything because it’s gaining you nothing.

In a previous post I wrote about cutting your goals into small, manageable tasks that can be completed daily in order to achieve a big goal. Marketing is really the sum of a lot of small, manageable things. The problem is that we have too many of them so it becomes a huge mess especially for someone who is not “in to” marketing.

Follow my advice and take that entire marketing plan of yours and pick a few things that you can do daily. Just a few! They should be small and manageable enough for you to complete them in a short period of time. If it’s going to take too long then try to either make it simpler, break it into smaller tasks or delegate it. My suggestion is to do all three.

Only doing a couple marketing tasks at a time is not going to make you a millionaire by tomorrow but you’ll feel like you’re being more proactive with your marketing which will give you a better outlook on your business. I own a marketing company that I used to hate mainly because I felt like I wasn’t doing anything. I followed this plan and started to find a whole new outlook on my business and I even started to gain revenue. Remember, you just have to do something and you have to do it with consistency.

There is an old saying that “the best diet/workout plan is the one you actually do.” Yes, like diets, there are some marketing strategies that are better than others but the best marketing strategy is completely useless if you aren’t going to implement it. So quit swinging for the fences and just try to get your ass on base every day. Believe me, you’ll rack up some points in the long run.

Action Plan: Assemble Your Marketing Bucket List

If you’re like me, you have a list in your head or on paper of items you want to complete for marketing. My Evernote is packed full of blog posts and magazine articles that have spawned some great marketing ideas. Take all of your ideas and list them out on paper or on your computer. Nothing too detailed though. You want a simple, bulleted list of items you would do if you had the time and money. This is the daydream phase, we’ll start to get real later.

In the next post I’ll show you how I pick my marketing tasks to focus on each day. Stay tuned.

A better title: Why Small Business Marketing Sucks Blows

To sum it up small business marketing is horrible because, as a small business owner, marketing is just one more task on an already overwhelming task list.

You’ve got to fulfill your product/service for your existing customers, deal with payroll, handle accounting, close some sales, follow-up, follow-up, follow-up, return that call, reply to all those emails and then you’ve got the marketing to-do list some time around 6pm.

So, to start, you’ve got social networking. Of course that’s at the end of the day for you and that means all the crap that you will be “re-tweeting” has already been “RT’d” so you’re no longer relevant especially if you RT @guykawasaki. Because we all follow that guy so you’re just going to be redundant .

Then there is new content for the website, sales copy, brochure copy, cold calls, SEO, guest posting on other blogs, and I’m just getting started. Don’t even ask me about the PR task list.

Marketing is always last on every business owner’s list. Most business owners say that it is because marketing is too expensive or that they don’t understand it. In some cases they may be right but the main complaint by business owners, myself included, is that they don’t have the time for marketing. The list is too long and the days are too short.

In the next post of this series we will discover the way I am able to stay on top of my marketing despite a very packed schedule. Keep reading…

Marketing sucks. No…wait…it bloooooows. There’s a chauvinist saying that goes something like “show me a really hot woman and I’ll show you a man who’s tired of *dating* her.” I’m not a chauvinist and I can see the offensive nature of that statement. However it does, crudely, illustrate my point here. The only people who think marketing a business is “cool” are the people who aren’t marketing a business.

Outsiders see marketing as Super Bowl ad spots and Budweiser Frogs. The reality is that marketing is a data-driven, uphill marathon that you never stop running. I had lunch with a friend the other week who said “SEO (search engine optimization) sucks because you’re never done with it.” “You have to keep doing it. There’s no end.” The same goes for all marketing. If you want to keep making money there sport then you better keep marketing.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love marketing. I love the numbers part and nothing gets me more excited then showing off spreadsheets and new analytics reports. (My wife thinks I’m very weird.) Here’s the thing, some of us are marketing professionals who, if we didn’t have to market our current businesses, would create businesses just so we could be in the “marketing game” but the rest of you are business owners who are good at whatever it is that you are good at and that thing isn’t marketing.

If you’re smart, that thing you are “really good at” is the product or service you sell. You are very talented at whatever it is that you do and marketing isn’t your thing yet you are burdened by the task of successfully marketing your business. Most small business owners don’t have a full time marketing person on their staff so this means that they are the marketing department for their own company. Even more, if your a smart business owner, having a full time marketing person on your staff should mean nothing other than the fact that you’ve got someone to share this task with you. You should still be paying attention to the marketing of your own business no matter how many “pros” you have on the payroll.

Bottom line – if you own a business, any business, you’re “in marketing” and you must act accordingly.

In this series we’ll discover the ways I’ve been able to overcome the “suckiness” that is Small Business Marketing. Stay tuned…

[Image Credit]

One of my favorite bands, The Sounds, is working on a new album and leaked their first single a few weeks ago.

Note: If you aren’t a fan of New Wave music or just hate “them foreigners” all together (they’re from Sweden) then don’t take my recommendation – but they are good.

One thing I noticed today is that they are running a new contest where fans can download the final, mastered single before anyone else. Now this is nothing new and it would hardly be news/blog worthy. However the contest centers around each contestant submitting their own version of the band’s song. Confused?

Landing page from The Sounds' Website

Okay, it goes a little like this:

1. Fill out the online form
2. Receive the sheet music (as well as a link to download the song when the contest ends)
3. Create your own cover of the song
4. Your friends, and other fans, can vote for you
5. Win and you will get a prize pack in addition to the song download.

This accomplishes three aspects of social marketing that most companies/brands/websites/YOU have a hard time with. Here’s how:

Successfully Encouraging Two-Way Interaction

Let’s face it, some of us have a hard enough time just getting our followers to retweet us or comment on a blog post (myself included). In the case of The Sounds they already have a loyal following online full of people who comment on their posts. Here they’ve stepped it up a notch by asking people to actually take the time and work for a change instead of just “liking,” “retweeting” or commenting.

Even more, everyone who enters the contest is now added to The Sounds mailing list. Just think what you could do if you had a steady stream of people jumping on your mailing list.

Now you may not have a very engaged following. That’s okay. Pick the right giveaway and those sleepy followers will snap in to action. The key here will be to really know and understand your followers in order to find something that will entice them. If your target demo is a bunch of vegan, tree hugging hippies I doubt they’ll snap into action over an all-you-can eat beef fest from a gas guzzling food truck. But you should know your demo well enough now anyway. If you don’t then you’re way to unprepared to even be marketing your business so go back to Business 101 genius.

Creating unique content (and freakin’ automating it!)

This is probably the biggest issue for people. Creating unique and relevant content on a consistent basis is time consuming and it, I’ll confess, suuuucks. These guys found a way to not only create a steady stream of unique content but they got their fans to make it for them! Not only does it solve that problem but it gets even better when you look at the fringe benefits.

Here are some points you may have overlooked:

1. Contestants upload their video (content) to their own sharing accounts (YouTube, Vimeo, etc). Submissions are not posted to the band’s account. What does this mean? A ton of accounts that could link back to their website thus creating an SEO storm of awesomeness! To say nothing of the fact that they are leveraging each contestants subscribers.
2. Contestants are encouraged to get their friends to vote for them. This means that contestants will promote their video on Facebook and Twitter to get the votes they need. Not everybody in their circle of influence may be aware of the band. This now extends the band’s reach for free!. (Average user has 130 friends on Facebook and 126 followers on Twitter – A person with a mailing list of just 100 people could extend their reach to an average of 25,600 new sets of eyes. What could you do with that kind of reach?) And I didn’t even mention that they’ll email it too!

Making it viral

If you’ve read this far you probably don’t even need an explanation here. Bottom line, each piece of unique content is going to be promoted to and by every contestant’s friends in addition to the band itself sharing it on their site. That’s a lot of content to be spread around. And we’re just assuming here that every video is average and only gets passed from contestant to immediate friend and not that the friend will share it with their friends.

Even better is the fact that this is all pretty much free for the band. Think about it, YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Twitter – these guys get the bill for the bandwidth not the band. They only pay for what hits their site and they’ll be happy to if it means new visitors.

So what can I do? I’m not a Swedish rock band Adam!

This is going to be fun. Let’s outline the plan.

STEP ONE: Find a product or service that you can give away for free to anyone who signs up for your list. This could be an awesome e-book, Starbucks gift card, whatever. Make sure it is not for one of your services or products unless that product or service is VERY desired. We’re assuming here that people don’t know you very well so a discount for your services isn’t going to be enticing because they don’t know you well enough to believe that your services are worth their email address.

It also can’t be a discount because that implies that people will still need to buy something to use it. Think about it, 20% off of something means you still have to pay 80% and nobody in this economy wants to buy anything extra. Keep it popular and keep it free.

STEP TWO: The contest. This could be anything really but I would suggest something that is relevant to your industry. For example a carpet cleaner could have someone submit a photo or video of the worst stain in their house. I would also suggest that they need to submit their entry to a public sharing site (YouTube, Flikr, whatever) and link to you. This will ensure that you don’t need any extra IT to support the contest and it will also help with the above link-building/SEO benefit I mentioned.

STEP THREE: Encourage them to share and have their friends vote for them on your very “optimized to convert” website/landing page.

STEP FOUR: The winner gets the free prize of your choice – it better be good. Again, you may not even want to put your own services as the prize. If people don’t know you enough to spend money on your services then they may not know you well enough to go through all this trouble to win your services either. If you absolutely must have your product or service in there then I would suggest a gift bag with other cool things in there too.

Tip for the broke: Can’t afford to buy something cool as a prize? Talk to your customers, vendors or other business owners. Maybe you could give away their products or services. This would help get exposure for them and you wouldn’t have to pay for anything!

I’m excited to put this plan in motion for my businesses and I’ll be sure to post the results.

Try it out and let me know how it works for you. Additionally, if you have any ideas on how you could make this plan even better please leave a comment and share it with our community.

Good luck and thanks for reading!

I came across a very old post from Chris Brogan who, by all accounts, is pretty much an internet badass. He breaks rules, he makes rules – if the Internet was Arnold’s this dude would be the Fonz. Like I said, this post was very old (thanks “related posts” plugin) but I think it still teaches us a great lesson.

His whole post is just a pleading to the general public to slow down on asking him to link to their sites in an attempt to get traffic. On the surface it was more of an internal memo to his community than an insightful blog post. Note: “On the surface”

Here’s what struck me:

I asked the question in Twitter today, whether anyone could cite whether my pointing towards something was even useful, from a stats perspective. Most folks couldn’t answer, and several wanted me to test it out by pointing to their site. So, for the most part, some folks who have asked for this don’t even know if it’s making a difference.

This sums up most marketing attempts from celebrity endorsements to unprepared companies jumping in to Social Media. We spend more time looking at brief glimpses of opportunity without questioning a) what we would do if it paid off and b) if it would even be worth the investment in the first place.

Who remembers this guy?

Demand Results
A great example of this is the Super Bowl ad phenomenon. Companies spend all of their money on a 30-second spot and they aren’t even sure if it’s going to pay off. They just think, “All those people are watching so It’s gotta pay off.” That makes about as much sense as promoting a local gay bar on Spike instead of Bravo. Know your demographics people and demand results. Yes, marketing takes some balls and you need to gamble every now and then. But if you look at the data available and give it some thought you should be able to logically expect (demand) some results from your investment. If you can’t…then don’t do it.

If you don’t believe me think about the Pets.com Super Bowl commercials from like eight years ago. I know a lot of people who are still talking about those commercials but I can’t find a single person who bought anything from that damn sock puppet.

You need to think about results. Which then brings me to strategy.

Catching the Car
This is so cliche I’m embarrassed to type it. Back in the day before animal laws, and apparently fences, dogs chased cars. However, they never really figured out what they would do if they actually “caught” a car. If the car stopped they just looked confused. That’s what happens when businesses focus on the hunt and not on the reality of if it works out.

Let’s say you did your demo research and you gave it some thought and you even decided that a “Chris Brogan endorsement” would work so well you’d pay for it. Now what? So what if Chris linked to you for free just because you emailed him, you were polite and he had some extra time. Now what? Does your site have the correct components to ensure it would convert?

It is very likely that if the stars aligned and he sent a typhoon of traffic your way the only thing that would increase would be your bounce rate. Why? Because everyone would stop by, see that there’s no point in staying and bail on you before you could spell “analytics.”

I’m working on an expensive ad campaign for one of my companies but I’m testing my landing pages on 15 cent Facebook ads first so that I know, when it’s time to shell out the coin, my stuff works. You need to prepare. I could spend $100k on advertising tomorrow and I’d get some sales but it could still be a waste if I’m not set up for it. And I’m just talking conversion here. Some companies don’t even have the system, logistics or staff to handle sudden growth.

So why shouldn’t Chris Brogan link to me?
Take a look around my site. At the time of writing this, I’m still getting back into the blogging saddle. There isn’t a whole lot going on with this site so most people may not stick around. Yeah I’d get some new followers on Twitter but I’m not sure I’ve got the energy to properly engage those people anyways which wastes their time. And I haven’t done the research to even see if his demo contains my ideal customers which wastes my time.

Bottom line, put some thought in to your marketing. Whether you’re spending time or money, you can’t afford not to.

If you missed it, here’s Chris’ post